Having Read the Fine Print
by gveret
Summary: She's not broken; she's misassembled.


******Warning: **Implied (canonical) child abuse.

**Note:** Ikuhara, you utter bastard.

* * *

Through the course of your life, many people will tell you the things you want to hear. You'll be deaf to most of them. The others, you'll despise. It's the sad fate of those who are living.

It's possible, if you are especially unfortunate, that you will at some point find someone whom you'll actually be able to believe.

.

Yuri always understood the world well. She found it wasn't so hard, not as long as you allow yourself to see it the right way, even if it hurts. Because the world is not very different from the things you believe in, and it's not very different from the things people say when they don't care what you think. Not very different at all – in fact, it's exactly the same.

When Yuri said things, she always cared what they'd make you think, which is naturally why she's so unreliable. Her father never did, though. Her father never cared. Naturally why he was so much of the world.

Sitting in a park one afternoon, looking at an artificial pond and being told she is liked, Yuri couldn't help but feel a little bitter.

"It's not fair," she said, "if you like everything. It's cheating. It doesn't count."

Momoka pouted at the pond, pushing her fingertips into the metal bench so that the skin under her fingernails turned white. It was a little bit painful how Yuri always noticed things like that, but it was also a little bit nice. "If I make you a list of all the stuff I don't like, will you believe me then? I'll make a list," Momoka said in the voice of new year resolutions. "I'll use highlighters. It'll be convincing." She glanced at Yuri, and Yuri wasn't looking at her so she only saw it through the corner of her eye. "You'll be convinced."

"I'll never believe you," Yuri told her. "You'll never convince me."

"I might, if I use highlighters," she insisted. "Even you can't just ignore things that make sense and look organized."

Something twitched in the muscles of Yuri's face. "Why do you like highlighters so much, anyway?"

"I dunno. Adults use them."

Yuri looked down at her lap. She didn't know why what Momoka said suddenly made her knuckles white. There must have been frogs in the pond, because one of them croaked.

Momoka laughed. It was a sound Yuri remembers like you remember the taste of chocolate ice cream, that phantom feeling in your mouth that you know feels almost the same but just isn't as fun. Then Momoka slithered her fingers in between Yuri's. "Why do you hate adults so much, anyway?"

She wouldn't give Yuri her hand back.

"I'll take you away," she said, resting their interlocked hands on her knee and elbowing Yuri to make her stop squirming. "We'll go to the moon and make up ways to walk that don't look as stupid as all the other astronauts. Most people who say that just don't understand what they're talking about, or think that the moon's made of cheese or something, and that's why they never get there. But we can really do it, Yuri."

"Stop," Yuri said quietly.

"There's no adults there. 'Cept maybe the astronauts. But they're probably all Russian anyway. It'll mostly be just you and me. Only when my little sister is born, we can look down at earth even though we've almost forgotten about it, and, like, shoot some fireworks or something, just so she'll know she has two really cool older sisters who totally live way up over on the moon."

"Stop it."

"We won't need school and we won't need parents. You won't need all those bandages."

"Shut up!"

"I'll never hurt you." Momoka twisted so that she was looking Yuri right in the eyes, and her fingers hovered above Yuri's cast. "I promise."

And Yuri didn't know what to do with her lips, and she didn't know what to do with her eyes, but she just didn't have any choice.

Momoka smiled twistedly at her tears. "You're so weird," she said. "I'll tell you another secret, if you stop crying."

The world wasn't ever as hard to understand as some of the things Momoka said.

.

"What are you doing?"

Thunk.

"Stop that."

Thunk.

"I said, stop it."

Thunk.

"Stop crying."

Thunk-thunk.

"Yuri."

Tik-thunk.

"You're even uglier when you cry."

_Clatter._

.

Do you know that feeling, when you're just so tired you don't even want to close your mouth? You don't need it open anymore, it's not like you have anything to say and it's not like you have anything left to scream about and it doesn't take long for it to dry up.

Isn't it weird how teeth have feelings? It's why you bite ice cream at your own peril. Teeth can feel dry. It's not exactly unpleasant. It just feels weird.

You must know that feeling, when you're so tired you can't fall asleep.

You don't need to blink as much when you're crying. Sometimes it feels like keeping your eyes closed takes a lot of effort. Your eyelids twitch like you're keeping them shut by force, which is silly because they're _your_ eyelids and you don't need to force them to do anything, right?

She's just very tired, which is why her eyes and her teeth and her throat and her brain feel so annoyingly incompliant. It's why things on the ceiling seem so much nicer than what she's got down here. It's a stupid idea, to live on a ceiling. An upside down world is just a normal upside up and downside down world viewed from the opposite direction. Yuri knows looking at things differently doesn't change them. There's only one right way to look.

She's learning it. She's a quick learner; her father said so.

Her lips can feel her fingers better than her fingers feel her lips. What's up with that? Her lips are a lot more interesting; why would she want to feel her own fingers?

The cracks don't hurt. Cracks in her back hurt, and cracks in her arms and legs and her stomach, but not cracks in her lips. The cracks in her lips don't feel much at all. They only feel her fingertips.

How much longer before she's not tired anymore? How much longer before she's so tired she goes back to being not tired or at least not-tired enough to go to sleep?

How much longer before she's beautiful?

Forever, of course. Because marble is already beautiful to begin with. That's the thing, isn't it? Only beautiful things can be made more beautiful. Something unlovable will never be changed enough. Just chip, chip, chip away at it until there's nothing, like this, and then it's no longer ugly, because it's no longer anything.

_Soon_.

Yuri closes her mouth. She closes her eyes. Being tired can be done in more ways than one.

.

"'I will make you a bargain,' he said, and his eyebrows grew so big he had to brush them aside. Like this." Momoka swiped at her bangs, which would never listen to her no matter what. "So he brushed his eyebrows aside and he said," she pitched her voice as low as it would go, which wasn't very much, "'I will offer you something you cannot have for the price of something you cannot give, and you will regret it for ever after. Okay?'

"And I said, 'Okay.'"

Yuri looked at her and thought of legends that must be dead. "Did he really say '_okay_'?" she asked dubiously.

"Yeah," said Momoka. "And he had really long hair. I think maybe fangs. Or horns or something. I don't know. He was weird."

Yuri looked at her and saw something that didn't need to be beautiful. "Why did you do it?"

"I think life should be as interesting as possible." The faraway look was quickly dropped. "And I thought he looked really cool."

Yuri stopped looking at her. "What… what was the price?"

Momoka held up the diary. How can something be that pink? "My destiny," she said.

.

The things Yuri remembers about her mother are all false.

She remembers flowers that were beautiful but didn't have a real scent. She remembers hugs that went under your armpits and all the way around your back and then up to the shoulders. She remembers belly pokes and nose tweaks and merciless foot tickling and lipsticky kisses on the forehead. She doesn't remember shouts and stinging cheeks.

She remembers going shopping and being mind-poppingly bored while her mother tried on so much too many pretty dresses. She doesn't remember the dresses being always a size larger than before.

She remembers snooping around in the makeup cabinet and being caught and laughed at and taught how to apply nail polish. She doesn't remember forgotten mascara that got too thick to use and powder scattered around the trashcan.

She also remembers,

"Yuri, how did you get so beautiful? There's no way you got that from your father." And a giggle. "But don't tell him I said that."

And,

"Yuri, you know you can do anything you want if you try hard enough. You know it's okay to fail sometimes. You know you're perfect just the way you are. You know that, right?" And a tut. "What do they teach you at that preschool? These are the basics."

And maybe,

"Yuri, your parents will always love you. Even when we're angry with you we still love you. Even if we've stopped loving each other." And a sigh. "We'll never stop loving you. Never forget that."

She doesn't remember,

"I'm leaving and going very far away."

Or,

"I'm never coming back."

Or,

"Don't try to contact me."

Yuri doesn't remember anything about her mother that is true.

.

Every time you go to sleep, it's like dying.

Because, you give up your hold on the world, and maybe you believe it'll be given back to you when you wake up, but you really have no reason to. Control is something you take and it's something that demands maintaining. Every time you go to sleep, you trust yourself to be able to get it back.

Of course Yuri never trusted herself with something like that. It's not like she ever had that strong a grip on the world even while she was awake.

She doesn't know if her father ever slept. He might not have needed to. The dark, wrinkled skin beneath his eyes might have always been nothing but a kind of artistic expression.

Momoka fell asleep in Yuri's lap once, and it was the only time Yuri saw her sleeping. It somehow seemed to make her hair softer, being asleep – or maybe it was just because it was the only time Yuri had actually had the courage to touch it. But she did. And it was soft.

"You won't die," she'd told Momoka then. "I'd never take your world away from you."

Momoka must have appreciated the sentiment, even if she couldn't register it, or she wouldn't have sighed through her nose like that in a way that was really rather cute. It made Yuri smile.

"Yeah," she said, four knuckles hiding her smile and four others weaved in Momoka's hair. "You'll always wake back up. I'll make sure."

It shouldn't be too hard, keeping just one little girl alive. There are so many people crawling all over the place, living, sticking to reality at a billion slimy points. There's no reason why this one shouldn't leave as much of a mark as anyone else. No – more, much more of a mark, and for longer, as well. Why not? Why not, when most of the world is so ugly, and her touch makes things seem suddenly beautiful?

When Momoka woke up, she stretched her neck and said, "You're just slightly less uncomfortable than the metal benches at the public park, but not by much, you know." Then she yawned. "If you're gonna make me fall asleep on you, at least be responsible and bring a pillow next time."

"Next time," Yuri had said and forgotten to drop the smile, "I will."

Maybe it didn't take all that much, after all, to bring back the dead.

.

One day when Yuri looked out the window, the David wasn't there. And when she looked out of her room, her father wasn't there. And when she looked in the mirror, everything that hadn't been there still wasn't there either.

Momoka only stayed in the hospital for a little while. The crematorium had a much more insistent place for her.

Yuri sat next to Keiju at the wake. He cried so much he started hiccupping, and his face got red and swollen and his tears mixed in with the mucus. She wasn't sure why, but she envied him.

Momoka's mother had Momoka's new little sister strapped to her in a baby wrap. Even she wore black. Momoka's father laid a heavy hand on one of Keiju and Yuri's shoulders each, and gave a sort of somber nod of acknowledgement. It felt to Yuri like an accusation. _Why are _you_ still alive? _

She, who is the daughter of a vanished man and of so little use besides. Of course, he was right. It wasn't a fair exchange.

Amongst the sea of black, Yuri could see the impossibly pink patch of Momoka's diary sticking out of a bag. If she could, she would've torn it to so many pieces there wouldn't be a single letter left whole.

Home was empty, except for the mallet and chisels and the dozen stone eyes. On the work desk, the blood that had soaked into the wood and wouldn't be banished even by bleach was miraculously gone. Even the sheets were white.

Only Yuri's flesh bore witness to what should have been. Her body, which wasn't even complete yet, was the only proof that things weren't supposed to be this way.

How stupid is that?

.

Yuri got in the habit of talking to her mirror. It was likely, she reasoned, that if she can't reach Momoka through it, she might at least reach her father.

And, failing that, it would still be someone familiar to talk to.

"I'm sorry," she told it. She apologized to it often. If either of them heard it, maybe they would take pity on the crazy little girl who speaks to silvered glass and forgive her.

"I miss you." She did.

Everything healed eventually, even bruises in invisible places, and she never saw the disgusting pink diary again. At least there were several scars left, which were ugly and horrible and made her feel a little better.

"I found some money in an envelope in the kitchen." She hoped, if her father was listening, that he didn't think of it as stealing. "I went to the grocery store around the corner. I don't think the greengrocer likes me very much."

When you talk to a mirror, you have no choice but to be confronted with your reflection. You have no choice but to see yourself. It's painful, but Yuri couldn't help looking.

"He frowned at me. I hope he doesn't mind me shopping there. I hope he doesn't poison any of the apricots."

Yuri had never wanted to be noticed; it could only mean bad things for someone like her. But she didn't have her father anymore, and she didn't have Momoka, and she probably needed someone else. It seemed too scary, to not have anyone. But if she wanted someone, she'd have to be noticed. To be notable.

That seemed scary, too. But then, it's not like it would be the first time she played pretend.

"It's the right season for apricots."

Smiling demurely is encouraged, among young ladies, and demure smiles are small. Looking at her small smile in the mirror, Yuri realized it isn't so hard. It's easy. A small smile is no effort; it's even easier than no smile at all.

"They're very…"

The smile wasn't ugly. It wasn't her own.

"Orange."

Yuri shouldn't be afraid of the grocer. Even if he did poison those apricots, why should she care? Being poisoned, it's not something worth worrying about.

Being afraid of consequences is pointless; for everything you do there's a price, after all. If you can't pay it, you suffer. It's simple. It isn't scary. And suffering isn't a difficult thing to do.

She doesn't even like apricots all that much at all.


End file.
